Brief
Not so long ago, Carphone Warehouse was basically a high street retailer. Yes, they had an an online presence. But it was fragmented. We had an opportunity to unite the channels and make digital a much bigger percentage of total sales. But we'd have to prove ourselves first.
Insight
Retail telecoms is a mightily competitive industry. Which means if you lose audience engagement for a second, you wave bye bye to a sale. That’s why whatever e-commerce solution we devised would have to put the user in the driving seat.
Solutions
We needed to show Carphone Warehouse that we could offer a differentiated product. So we created a pilot called phonespot.com. It gave Carphone Warehouse the confidence that we had the knowledge and skills to make a significant contribution to their business plan. But there's nothing like a little A/B testing to drive a message home. So we built a microsite that would go head to head with their existing website, pulling products from their platform. It was a completely random controlled test. 50% of traffic went to their website. The other half to our microsite. Two things soon became apparent. The first was that our microsite was achieving a 65% uplift in sales. The second was that we should be in charge of all Carphone Warehouse's digital marketing. Which is how Essence came to be given responsibility for developing, hosting and maintaining one of the UK's most visited retail websites.
Results
A lot came out of our three year relationship with Carphone Warehouse. We started off by doing their media. We ended up in charge of everything from their design & build to their online creative. The metrics were great. The recognition by the eConsultancy Awards, NetImperative Awards and NMA Effectiveness Awards, was satisfying. But the experience, for both client and agency, was extra special.
